i have a heart but it's buried
by Starry Nights
Summary: The resentment starts from the womb. It's hard to like something you never wanted in the first place (or my attempt at exploring the Pataki dynamics and why Helga is mostly ignored by her parents).


**Disclaimer:** Characters belong to someone else.

I have a heart but it's buried (under layers of hate)

It's hard to like something you didn't want.

Bob learned this early. Old Man Pataki was a tough old man. Always knew where you stood with him_. Everyone respects an honest man, son. They may not like 'im 'cause the truth is an awful thing to sell people but they sure as hell will respect him._

_Son, you listening? You gotta speak up and tell the truth else you'll be fed a bunch of stuff you don't like and it'll be your own fault._

When he met her, she had Old Man Pataki's seal of approval. She can keep up with you, kid. And he was right, Miriam Olsen was a wisegal with a sharp tongue who could hold her moonshine. At night, they'd run behind the ranches and farms and he'd watch her do laps in the lake a mile from his house.

"You're taking me away from the dust, Bee." She said to him one night. Her skin was cool and still wet from her swim. Nighttime made her sweet like honey and he'd given her the world if she asked that night. He rubbed the knee that ruined her chances at competing but she was smiling.

"Don't worry about it." She said to him in the darkness of his pickup. "I can do other things." He slid that ring on her finger that night and they were off to the north to shed their hick accents and conquer the business world.

It started off fine. Moonshine was replaced with black coffee, three sugars and a splash of milk and the city grime replaced the Oklahoma dust. He watched her ace math classes while he became known for his cutthroat business tactics. When graduation day arrived, their little dorm apartment for married couples is boxed up and there was nothing on the desk except a hard plastic stick.

"We'll figure it out." He said to her.

Olga was a perfect happy baby. She smiled all the time and she seemed to reach all of those baby milestones ahead of her time. Bob would bring her in to the furniture store (their first job) and watch the women coo and admire the perfect blond curls and the wide blue eyes and he'd say. "This couch, perfect for babies. Our dear Olga here has never fallen off this couch!"

Or. "We'd have this exact couch in our living room, and baby Olga has spilled grape juice on it twice! Easy as sin to get off, right Miriam?"

"Of course!" Miriam would pull herself away from the numbers and ease out of the back office. She'd take Olga out of the playpen and tuck herself under Bob's arms. The perfect family. And those couches sold out!

Eventually, Bob got tired of working for other people. He loved the money. He loved being his own boss more. Olga tugged at his pants while Miriam crunched numbers in their upstairs office. "Let's do it, Bee."

Business at the Beeper Emporium is slow at first. Only doctors had beepers then but Bob is smart. He spotted one of them hip hop people on TV wearing one. Miriam found a local talent to wear the beepers. "Come to my store and I'll give you all one. Free."

_"Come to Big Bob's. He's the beeper king!" _The teen rapped in some cheesy commercial.

Business was great when Miriam and Bob were faced with another plastic stick. "We have everything we need, Miriam. We don't need this."

"I don't know if I can, Bee. It's a sin."

Bob chuckled. He tried to soothe her. "You haven't been to church in years!"

This pregnancy was different. Miriam was sick all the time. Hospital bills piled up. He had to hire someone else to do the numbers, to come up with a gimmick and to entice the lady customers. The same woman who glowed during her first pregnancy looked sickly, large and ungraceful. There was high blood pressure, gestational diabetes and finally bed rest in her seventh month. As Bob watched Miriam, the girl who swam laps every morning and captured his heart from atop a horse, wither away into _this. _He couldn't help but feel angry at the thing he never wanted in the first place.

The girl was born the day after April Fools after an agonizing 32 hours in labor. _Tie my tubes._ Miriam muttered to the nurses while the baby wailed in the background inconsolable.

It didn't get better. Helga cried all the time. She had colic and ear infections. She had colds and fevers. The hospital bills added up and Miriam...

"Postpartum depression." Miriam whispered slowly as she prepared dinner.

"Cause of the girl?"

"Hormones, B."

He looked over at Helga who was asleep on the car seat perched on the counter.

"So how do we fix it?"

Miriam decided to drink. He decided that it's all the girl's fault.

He doesn't recognize this woman who started to hide behind couches and slur her words together. He loved her but he doesn't know her so he loved Olga more. He bought her piano lessons, riding lessons and enrolled her in camp. He bought her a car for her 16th birthday.

"Miriam," He'd whisper on the nights when he missed her the most. "I wish you would stop."

"I can't." Her voice was soft and he could hear her take a swallow of her smoothie. He pretended that he can't smell the rum. "You were right."

"About what?"

"We didn't need a second child." He hates the girl just a little bit more then as she curled against his arm. "Remember how we'd swim in the quarry, B? We should get Olga swimming lessons."

This is how Helga gets her ballet lessons. Olga has two left feet and Miriam cried (after five smoothies) in the darkness of their bedroom. "I had ballet lessons! Helga should get them then."

He tried to give her everything. He tried to make her stop. She doesn't. She can't. He opened a second (and third and fourth) Big Bob's without her. Olga looks more and more like the woman he met so many years ago that it hurts him.

He still hates the girl.


End file.
